I didn’t get the streets, a mess of vehicles and animals, of constantly surprising diversity. It was hard to photograph the environment: food stands, shacks containing mysterious contraptions, shopfronts, offering all manner of goods and services, amidst which groups of male pilgrims, gaggles of school children, brightly saried women, hawkers, beggars (though not so many), policemen, fortune tellers. It was quickly clear that trying to capture all the novelty, even to decipher half of what was going on, wouldn’t be possible.<\/p>\n
So I changed to mode of taking care of neccessities, sightseeing and slowly coming to terms with the rest along the way. Along the way it felt like the journey might last for ever,\u00a0 and then it was receding into the past and with it the chance to document the ox-drawn carts, thatched hut villages, tamil script and funny images of pants and vests on hand painted signage and advertising. The flooded, severly potholed roads, candle-lit shops and so on. Until then there had always been tomorrow, and usually a more pressing need to be met in the moment. The sweltering heat and humidity, too, and often seeming to being the only foreigner in town, brandishing further signs of my otherworldliness and unattainable wealth felt uncomfortable. And, as things become familiar the urge to document them diminishes, soon you forget they were ever remarkable.<\/p>\n
The change on passing into the next region was marked, though familiar elements remained to be snapped another day: colourfully painted trucks, families sharing motorbikes, friends walking hand in hand and, though less frequent now, unexpected appearances by large mammals. The Dravidian temple architecture is of Tamil Nadu though, and I’m posting some photos of that here, from Trichy, a small city around 4000 years old, though today a little more modern than places I’d been so far.<\/p>\n\n\t\t